Marriott unveils hotel-based innovation lab

Marriott Hotels has established its Charlotte city-centre property as a live testing ground for new products and services.

M Beta is described as an innovation lab which enables “rapid prototyping” of anything from keyless entry to the latest technology in the property’s gym.

Guests can provide immediate feedback through “Beta Buttons” which count the number of “likes” for a particular innovation. The plan is to gather the “likes” as well as other feedback on the products and display them on digital “Beta Boards”around the property as well as via the TravelBrilliantly website.

The hotel-based lab follows the launch of Marriott TestBED – a six-week accelerator programme enabling early-stage travel startups to prove their product or service within a hotel.

The hotel giant will continue to use the TravelBrilliantly site to highlight innovations from within the company as well as any external ideas in play.

The website was launched three years ago as part of rebranding campaign to make Marriott more innovative and prepared for today’s travellers.

Linda is Managing Editor for tnooz. For the past decade, she has worked as a freelance journalist across a range of B2B titles including Travolution, ABTA Magazine, Travelmole and the Business Travel Magazine. In this time she has also undertaken corporate projects for a number of high profile travel technology, travel management, and research companies. Prior to her freelance career, she covered hotels and technology news for Travel Trade Gazette for seven years. Linda joined TTG from Caterer & Hotelkeeper where she worked on the features desk for more than five years.